“Jim and Kim Webster,” he answered. Nikki chuckled.
“I’ve always liked dictionaries,” said Nikki. When he raised an eyebrow, she added, “Webster. Like the dictionary.”
“I was thinking of Emmanuel Lewis,” he said, leaning back in his chair and running his hand over his face and then up over his scalp.
“And what do you do again?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“You don’t look like a lawyer.”
“What does a lawyer look like?” he asked, and Nikki shrugged; even she wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Meaner?” she suggested, with a teasing smile.
“I think I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.
“What do you want with Mr. Sarkassian?” she asked.
“I specialize in international law; he’s in shipping, needs meeting, blah, blah, blah.” The topic of his career seemed to bore him, and he turned his head again, looking for Sarkassian.
“I’m going to the restroom,” Nikki announced. She stood up, draping her napkin over the back of her seat.
“I’m not sure . . .” he said, half rising. Nikki couldn’t quite tell if it was a movement of old-fashioned courtesy or a gesture of protest.
“Not sure that I can make it to the bathroom on my own? Pretty sure I can,” she said, tossing her head slightly, and strode past him, before he could say anything else. She walked into the lobby following the signs pointing toward the restroom, considering that she might have just lied—especially in light of earlier events that day.
The restaurant was as expensive as Sarkassian’s clothes; the lobby was a marble-and-tile affair, flanked by long tanks of tropical fish floating like suspended flowers in an aquamarine sky. Nikki saw her reflection behind the fish and realized that the tank was not as deep as it looked, a mere six inches perhaps. Someone was speaking an odd Indo-European language, and she looked around, trying to spot the speaker. Sarkassian was standing near the door, his back to her, nearly hidden by a large potted palm. Occasionally, he tapped a few things into his SideKick, but otherwise, he seemed engrossed in the conversation being piped through the earpiece glued to his head. Nikki sidled closer, trying to identify the language. It had sounded like Greek for a moment, and then like Persian, but then neither. He started to turn, and Nikki quickly stopped eavesdropping and went toward the bathroom doors.
But she still paused to carefully examine her bathroom options and equally carefully chose the door marked WOMEN in a curling, ostentatious font. Some things she didn’t want to repeat in a day. Once inside, she paused. The restroom was lit with a curious wavering blue-green light and she realized that it came from fish tanks. The tanks in the lobby had been backed with a two-way mirror and from inside the restrooms, patrons could see into the lobby through the long window of glass and water.
She watched curiously as Sarkassian walked toward her and then sat down on the cushioned bench beneath the fish tank. If she leaned forward she could see the words he typed into his Sidekick. His fingers obscured the tiny buttons, but she could see the letters appear on the screen, and Nikki realized suddenly that he was typing in his password. Suppressing a slight twinge of guilt for her nosiness, she cranked her head to the left, trying to see the words and wishing the water wouldn’t blur her view so much.
“H-i-c-e-t-n-u-n . . .” Nikki muttered each letter under her breath as it was typed in.
A toilet flushed, startling her. She jumped.
“These fish tanks are such an interesting feature,” said the woman in the blue suit coming out of a stall. “Don’t you think?”
There was something knowing in the way the woman smiled, and Nikki knew she’d been caught. The woman was older than Nikki had guessed—north of middle age, but by how much, Nikki couldn’t say. She had an oval face, perfect makeup, and twinkling blue eyes. Nikki noted that she had the round, even tones of a Californian; she certainly wasn’t Canadian, at any rate.
“Um, yes, fascinating,” said Nikki, and hurried into a stall, avoiding eye contact. When she came out again, the woman had gone and Sarkassian had wandered back to the embrace of the potted palm. Nikki stared at his back, pondering his password. The HICE letter combo wasn’t common in English, and starting a word with tn was equally unlikely. Mentally, she tried parsing the letters in different ways. “Here and now,” said Nikki triumphantly, as another woman came in. Nikki blushed and hurried out, trying not to make any noise with her heels on the marble floor before gaining the safety of the carpeted dining area. Hic et nunc, translated from Latin, meant “here and now.” Extremely pleased with her translation, she dropped into her seat, hoping that her face wasn’t carrying a revealing flush, and prepared to make small talk.
But “Jim” wasn’t focused on her. Instead, he sagged into his chair, his expression fading from intense to blank. To Nikki he looked very tired, and for a moment she had to fight the urge to wrap her arms around him and tell him it, whatever it was, would be OK.
“Jim?” she said quietly, meaning to ask about Sarkassian.
“It’s not really my name, you know,” he said. Nikki stared at him, uncertain of what to say or what to make of his change in tone. He slumped back in his chair as though very tired; his right hand extended past the arm of his chair and he dangled a steak knife from the table between his fingers. He twirled the knife in an idle manner, catching light from the large windows overlooking the bay and reflecting it in thin slices onto the walls, the table, Nikki. She found herself holding her breath, as if she had fallen into some sunlit aquarium.
“What is your name?” she asked softly, trying not to break the mood.
“Z’ev,” he answered, still fixated on the knife and the light.
“Z’ev,” she repeated, sifting the name around in her head for a moment. “That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I guess. I was named after my granddad; he was Jewish.” He was staring at her now, the reflected light from the knife resting on her cheek. Nikki started to feel a little warm, but tried to return his gaze calmly.
“Mostly I’m a bit of a mutt. Mixed heritage—all that.”
“My father is Quebecois,” said Nikki, nodding.
He laughed. “Meaning what?”
“Mixed heritage.”
“Ah, yes, the mixing of different kinds of white people can be tricky.” It was Nikki’s turn to laugh.
“It is tricky,” she objected. “He had a whole different background from my mother. Different kind of family, different holiday traditions, different language. Just . . . different,” she concluded with a shrug.
“Mixed heritage,” he agreed,
“Why don’t you use your name?” asked Nikki.
He was hard to read, but Nikki found herself looking for the flitting shadows of emotion that crossed his face faster than clouds across the sun. He frowned slightly now, as if he regretted sharing that piece of information.
“Z’ev is a little too memorable for my taste,” he responded after a long moment. His gaze was fixed on her again, and Nikki felt a blush beginning to start somewhere below her collarbone and head upward.
“Huh,” she said. “You’re just a big old liar, aren’t you?” She made a quick head toss, flipping her hair over her shoulder while trying to look as flirty and teasing as possible. It was a move that had been working for her since junior high.
“What? No!” He was smiling, but she felt she had startled him.
“Oh, come on,” she said, laughing at his surprised expression and feeling in control of the conversation again. “You lie about your wife, your name, and I don’t think you really like rugby. Just what are you trying to sell Mr. Sarkassian?”
“What makes you think I’m trying to sell Sarkassian anything?”
“Well, if you’re not, you’re going to an awful lot of trouble for lunch. And you complimented his cufflinks.”
“I said they were interesting,” said Z’ev, shifting in his chair, but there was a smile lurking behind hi
s rough tone.
“Yes, but when you say ‘interesting’ with a smile it nearly always sounds like a compliment.”
“Really? How interesting.” He gave a smile of perfect bland surprise.
“Really,” retorted Nikki with marked sarcasm. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the question.”
“What do you want from Sarkassian?” she asked with an exasperated sigh.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, still smiling. “You tell me why you came along with us today and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
Nikki hesitated, not really wanting to share her humiliation with a stranger.
“That’s the deal,” he said, “take it or leave it.”
“I graduated in linguistics,” she said, trying to explain, but starting in the wrong place as usual. “I’ve had five jobs in the last three years, and none of them has been close to my degree. And it’s not like I haven’t been looking. But I need experience to get a job, and I need a job to get experience.”
“Real life is hard to do,” he said with impassive calm. His tone should have given the impression of disinterest, but instead it was somehow reassuring. As if everyone had trouble with reality and it was nothing to get excited about.
“It’s not like I thought it would be easy to grow up and get a real life,” protested Nikki. “I just didn’t think it was going to be this hard. I feel like I’m just stumbling around blindfolded, looking for the piñata while everyone else in the crowd laughs and shouts totally useless directions.”
“Hit ’em with the stick,” he advised in the same stolid tone, but there was a slight twinkle in his eye.
Nikki laughed. “I’ll try that. Anyway, two weeks ago I saw an ad for someone with my background. I was pretty excited. I got the interview, and my mom paid for the hotel.” Nikki decided to gloss over the part about Carrie Mae cosmetics. Some things were just too embarrassing. “And things were going really well until I actually got to the interview.”
“Why, what happened?” Z’ev picked at his salad, and Nikki frowned, uncertain that she really wanted to tell anyone. Then he caught her eye and smiled.
The world seemed entirely still when he smiled. It was possible that he had the most perfect mouth she had ever seen on a man.
“I accidentally went into the men’s bathroom,” said Nikki in a rush. She hadn’t been planning to mention the bathroom thing, but she had been distracted by his lips.
He tried to laugh and then coughed, choking on a carrot.
“I wasn’t expecting that. How’d you manage that?” he asked, reaching for his water.
“I somehow misread the signs and walked in on one of the interviewers.” Nikki paused, while Z’ev let out a booming chuckle. “Which would have been bad enough,” she said over his laughter, “except that later in the interview, they asked me about Ebonics. Which is when I knew I wasn’t going to get the job.”
“Ebonics?” Z’ev repeated quizzically.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yeah,” he said, obviously enjoying her misery.
“I tried to explain that languages aren’t really permanent structures,” Nikki said with a sigh. “They can’t really be corrupted. It’s more of an evolutionary model. Among linguists, African American English Vernacular, or AAEV, has been an accepted English dialect for many years. It has its own grammatical structure, consistent word usage, everything that makes a dialect. AAEV or Ebonics or street slang or whatever you want to call it is just the ongoing process of language growth. You can’t really freeze a language in place except on paper, and then, of course, it’s dead. What I failed to realize was that Mrs. Densley, the head interviewer, was an English freak.”
“The language of Shakespeare is hardly dead,” Mrs. Densley had said acidly, her small piggy eyes widening to their fullest.
“I already knew I wasn’t getting the job; I was just praying to get out of there with some last shred of dignity, when the guy from the bathroom, who up until then had been totally OCD’ing on the ceiling tiles and avoiding all eye contact, looked directly at me.”
Nikki looked at the smooth white tablecloth and her chipped nail polish. This had been the worst part.
“What’d he ask?” Z’ev tilted his head slightly to the right, catching Nikki’s downturned gaze. Nikki looked into his eyes and forgot what she was going to say. She forgot her embarrassment—forgot everything. His dark, coffee-colored eyes were full of sympathy, and suddenly it was easy to tell this last humiliating memory.
“I have one,” Bathroom Man had said, taking his eyes off the ceiling to look directly at Nikki. “How are you special?” Nikki had stared at him, dumbstruck.
“How are you special?” Z’ev repeated skeptically.
“I realize that it was embarrassing to be literally caught with his pants down, but the way he asked the question was vindictive. I’d just spent the last three hours justifying my entire existence to these people, and he wanted me to feel like . . .” She searched for the right words. “He wanted me to feel like nothing. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. I couldn’t think of anything that I could do that they couldn’t hire five monkeys to do.” Z’ev’s lips twitched. He was trying not to smile, and Nikki appreciated the effort.
“I was just sitting there staring at him, probably gaping like a fish, and, really, I felt like giving them all the finger and walking out. Which I should have done, but I ended up just saying some nonsense and waiting for the interview to end.”
“What’d you say?” persisted Z’ev.
Nikki blushed, but held her head a little higher, remembering her last stubborn flare of pride in the interview.
“How much I really enjoy Ebonics.”
“Good for you,” he said, grinning.
“Now it’s your turn,” said Nikki. “Tell me what you want from Sarkassian.”
“Nuh-uh,” he said, and shook his head.
“I told my story. Now you have to tell me about Sarkassian. We had a deal, buster.”
“Not Buster. Z’evvvv.” He drew out the v sound, for emphasis, and Nikki rolled her eyes. “Come on, you can say it.”
“Z’evvvv,” mimicked Nikki, and threw a crouton at him, which he caught and ate. “I’m out of croutons, but I will throw silverware if I have to,” she threatened.
“No, please, not the spoon.” His calm expression rendered the statement into sarcasm, and Nikki couldn’t help but laugh.
“Come on, spill, Z’evvv. It’s your turn.”
“Nuh-uh. You’re not finished yet.”
“What do you mean? I told them to f’shizel my nizel, came back to the hotel, and drank like a fish. End of my story, start of yours.”
“No, that’s why you were in the bar,” Z’ev began, but then stopped. Whatever he had been about to say was cut short as Sarkassian returned to the table, closely followed by a waiter carrying their steaks.
“Sorry to be so long,” Sarkassian said, folding into his chair, his long legs kicking out under the table, taking up space and forcing Nikki to tuck her feet under her own chair. “You wouldn’t think getting cargo to the correct destination would require so much effort. But for every new port there’s a new special interest to deal with: the longshoremen hate the boat crews, the crews hate the captains, I hate their unions. It just seems never ending.”
“That’s why you need me,” said Z’ev, bluntly.
“We’ll see,” said Sarkassian with a shrug, reaching for his drink. “Fortunately, you two seem to be able to entertain yourselves without me. I could hear you laughing out in the lobby, Jim.” He briskly sawed at his steak while he spoke and, at the last word, popped a piece into his mouth. If he saw Z’ev’s slight frown, he ignored it.
“Mmmm,” Sarkassian said around his mouthful. “I’m telling you, brilliant steak.”
“So you own those big container ships?” asked Nikki, cutting up her own steak. “You make sure the cargo
all gets where it’s going?” Z’ev eyed her suspiciously, and Nikki smiled sweetly.
“That is the general idea of shipping,” Sarkassian said. “We’re just like FedEx with much, much bigger packages. I would have thought Jim would have explained that to you. You should try to educate her more, Jim.”
Nikki gritted her teeth and smiled.
“Oh, I hear all about international waters and injunctions and things like that,” she said, trying to remember some factoid from her one International Politics and Policies class. “But I don’t get to hear much about the people actually doing the work.”
Sarkassian smiled, pleased with her slight massaging of his ego.
“Shipping is a complicated business, I won’t go into it at the dinner table. But needless to say, it gets more complicated all the time. All the increased security and cargo searches—it just slows down business.”
“People want to feel secure,” protested Z’ev mildly. “You can’t really blame them after 9-11.”
Sarkassian’s eyes were narrowed, and he chewed his steak with quick, decisive movements of his jaw.
“They want to feel more secure, but trust me, they don’t want to pay for what it’s going to take to be secure. Besides, it’s not like they actually catch the professional smugglers. And aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”
“I’m a lawyer,” said Z’ev, calmly sectioning off a forkful of mashed potatoes. “I’m on the side of my client.”
“Meaning you’re on the side of whoever pays you. You don’t mind being married to a hired gun, do you?” asked Sarkassian, switching his focus back to Nikki.
Nikki smiled awkwardly. She felt like Sarkassian was poking at her with the same kind of sadistic pleasure that a small boy might get from burning ants with a magnifying glass.
“Well,” she said, trying to think of something clever and in character to say, “I think the basic assumption is that, having married him, he’s my hired gun.”
“Good point,” said Sarkassian, nodding. “How’s that steak, love?”
“Good. Really good,” Nikki said, swallowing hard and forcing a smile, and Sarkassian matched it, enjoying the way she squirmed when he used condescending pet names.
Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel Page 10
